Despite only being a group of four, the About Turn Theatre Company created a huge amount of dramatic, fiery energy on stage. A musical about London’s riots in 2011, ‘Riot!’ makes a clear attempt to show the rioters’ motivations, depicting four specific characters and giving their backgrounds building up to the riots. The show lacks a specific plot, and there were moments of uncertainty during the physical theatre parts, but it is an arresting portrayal of city dwellers’ attempts to regain control in a society they feel is dominated by police, politicians and upper class capitalists. The music is decent, but whole thing could have been longer, to build on some of the more effective ideas here.

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ED2012 Theatre Review: How To Start A Riot (Worklight Theatre) The purpose of this show was to deconstruct the UK riots of August 2011, and it failed at almost every turn. The sociological analysis reached obvious conclusions while failing to answer its own questions regarding crowd psychology. The riots in question were naively treated as a new and unique problem,...